The effects of a text structure and paraphrasing intervention on the main idea generation and reading comprehension of struggling readers in grades 4 and 5

Identifying main ideas and summarizing text are evidence-based practices associated with improved reading comprehension outcomes. Struggling readers, however, have difficulty identifying main ideas. Previous reading interventions examined comprehension instruction that included paraphrasing or text structure instruction, which improved main idea identification and text structure identification, respectively. In a systematic review of the literature, I located no studies that have yet examined the impact of combined instruction in paraphrasing and text structure on the reading comprehension outcomes of struggling readers. This study examined the effects of a small group intervention targeting paraphrasing and text structure instruction on the main idea generation and reading comprehension of struggling readers in grades 4 and 5. Students were randomly assigned to receive the Tier 2-type intervention (n = 31) or a business-as-usual comparison group (n = 31). Students in the intervention received 25, 40-minute lessons focused on paraphrasing sections of text by identifying the main topic and the most important idea about that topic. Students utilized the text structure organization to inform their main idea generation; main idea statements were written in a way that aligned with the overarching structure of the text. Multiple regression analyses yielded statistically significant, positive results in favor of the intervention group on measures of text structure identification (R² = .13) and main idea generation (R² = .11); there were no statistically significant effects on a measure of general reading comprehension. These findings provide initial support for utilizing this instruction to improve students' main idea generation on untaught structures. Word reading skill at pre-test was not a statistically significant moderator of intervention effects on any outcome measure; students with below average, average, and above average word reading skill benefited equally from the intervention. Students' perceptions of the main idea instruction were positive. Future research might investigate further iterations of this type of comprehension intervention with larger, more heterogeneous samples in order to assess the generalizability of the results.Special Educatio